d goodbye.

"We'll try," said her Uncle Bobbsey. "But maybe there won't be room,
with Santa Claus and all his reindeers."

"Oh, we'll make room for you," spoke Freddie. "Santa Claus won't stay
long."

With a merry peal of laughter the visitors went off to the station,
waving farewells. Then came rather a quiet time at the Bobbsey house,
as there always is when visitors go. There seems to be a sort of
loneliness, when company leaves, no matter how many there are in the
family, nor what fun there is. But the feeling soon passes.

"Well, we'll soon be at school again," said Bert, a day or so before
the opening of the Winter term. "I wish we'd get some snow. Then it
would be more fun."

"Yes," said Freddie. "We could build snow forts and have snowball
fights. I wish it would snow hard."

"So do I, so we could ride down hill," said Nan. "Is your big bob
nearly done, Bert?"

"No, Charley and I have quite a lot of things to do on it yet, but
we're going to work every night after school now, and it will soon be
finished."

"I'm going to have skates for Christmas," announced Freddie. "I hope
the lake will be frozen over by then."

"I guess it will be," returned Bert. "It's getting colder every night."

The Bobbseys were back at school. For a time Nan and Bert, who were in
a higher grade, did not like it so well, as they had a strange teacher,
and lessons, too, were more difficult. But they were not children who
gave up easily, and soon they were at the head of their class as usual.
Their teacher, too, was much nicer than they had thought at first.
They had considered her stern, but it was only her way, and soon wore
off.

As for Freddie and Flossie, they had advanced but little except in
reading, and this opened a new world to them.

"We'll soon be reading books," boasted Freddie, on his way home one day.

"And I'm going to read all about firemen, soldiers and Indians."

"Oh, I'm not," said Flossie. "I'm going to read how to be a nurse, so
I can take care of you when you're hurt."

"That will be nice," said Freddie.

One day, at recess, Bert saw Jim Osborne motioning to him in a secret
sort of fashion.

"Come on with us," said Jim, who was a new boy in school. "Danny Rugg
and some of the rest of us are going to have some sport."

"What doing?" asked Bert.

"Smoking cigarettes back of the coal house. I've got a whole pack."

"No; I don't smoke," said Bert quietly.

"Bah! You're afraid